Brooklyn #300 Brown Pelican
A belated announcement of a milestone in my home county. On July 20, 2024 at Plumb Beach, Brown Pelican was my 300th species for Kings County. I saw this pair on a Brooklyn Bird Club field trip led by Peter Dorosh.
The count does not included escapees and hybrids. It does include introduced and established species like Monk Parakeet, Mute Swan, and the ubiquitous Rock Pigeon.
I initially thought this was #299, but I didn’t realize I was not counting a Thick-Billed Murre I had seen in Dead Horse Bay back in 2005 before I started keeping regular eBird lists.
When I started keeping track, I’m not sure if anyone had 300 species total for Brooklyn. Shane Blodgett might have been the first to reach that number. Nowadays eBird reports over 20 people in the 300 Club. Josh Malbin is on top with an astonishing 341 species.
It’s taken me two decades to get to 300. You can’t see that many in a single year because it requires a lot of rarities that show up every few years to once in a lifetime. Super rarities on my list include:
- Gray-hooded Gull
- Gray-breasted Martin
- Purple Gallinule
- Rufous Hummingbird
- Common Gallinule
- Anhinga
- Western Reef-Heron
- Western Meadowlark
Harlequin Duck and Wild Turkey are species that are routinely and easily found one county over, but so far have shown up less than once a decade in Brooklyn.
Some birds that used to be extremely rare have become much more common, even regular, in the last ten years including Red-headed Woodpecker, Townsend’s Warbler, Swainson’s Hawk, and Painted Bunting. Common Raven has gone from never on Long Island to a nesting species that’s easily found.
I’ve also missed a number of rarities in the borough including Gray Kingbird, Pacific Loon, Painted Redstart, Fulvous Whistling Duck, and Hermit Warbler.
Most tantalizingly, some regular species show up every year, but I’ve yet to find them. These include Purple Martin, Greater White-fronted Goose, Wilson’s Storm-Petrel, and Pectoral Sandpiper.
